I write this fully acknowledging that Matt Harvey has been otherworldly so far in his young career. Any time you are getting compared to Tom Seaver and a young Dwight ‘Doc’ Gooden, you are doing something right. But I’ve been around the New York sports scene long enough to know that it is very fickle. I mean we’ve seen Derek Jeter, DEREK JETER, booed mercifully because of a slow start to a season where he eventually rebounded, and to borrow a John Sterling term, had a Jeter-ian season.

Clown

Anyway Matt Harvey is off to an incredible start at the moment. As of this writing, he has pitched 56.1 innings with a 1.44 ERA and a 0.73 WHIP. Those are his rate stats and they are as mentioned, video game numbers. You’ll notice I didn’t mention his win/loss record because I find it useless. Harvey pitched a complete game one hitter on May 7 start and didn’t get a win in the start because his team didn’t score. There’s just too much noise in a win/loss record for it to be a useful statistic.

If we delve a little farther into his rate stats, we find these numbers (all of this under the caveat of a small sample size):

K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% GB% HR/FB

9.91 2.24 0.48 .190 87.3% 44.5% 5.8%

As I mentioned before, these numbers are insane. If Harvey kept this pace up the rest of the year, it would go down as one of the best pitching seasons of all time. But as you can tell by the title of the article, I’m here to tell you that it’s not possible to sustain these numbers.

The first number to zone in on here is BABIP. This stands for batting average on balls in play, or in other words, the stat measures balls that the fielders are able to catch or make a play on. There’s an interesting dichotomy when looking at this stat from a hitter’s perspective versus a pitcher’s perspective, but the general theory is that pitcher’s don’t have much control over their BABIP. In small sample sizes a BABIP of .190 is possible as evidenced above. But extended over a large season sample, we would expect this average to regress back to the mean for pitchers which hovers around .300.

What does this mean? It means some of the contact Harvey is drawing right now is either randomly or luckily finding his fielders, depending on which word choice you prefer. A BABIP for Harvey around the .280 mark would be a fair estimation by the end of the year. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the Mets play in a gigantic home ballpark and the defense behind him is underwhelming to put it kindly.

The other two stats that jump off the page at me screaming “unsustainable” are the ones involving the vaunted home run. An HR/9 ratio of 0.48 is about 40% of what Harvey has achieved both last year in the big leagues (0.76) and for his career in the minor leagues (0.66). The league average for this ratio last year across MLB was 1.02, so you can see Harvey is way outperforming in this department. Again, a regression back to his mean of about 0.70 would be expected by year-end.

The last stat I wanted to touch on was his HR/FB (home run to fly ball) ratio. At 5.8%, Harvey’s HR/FB is again about 40% of what we should expect. Last year he was at 9.6% and while we don’t have any data for his minor league stints, I would bet it was somewhere in the 8-9% range. The league average for this ratio last year was a surprisingly high 11.3%.

All of this is just a fancy was of saying that Harvey has a underinflated ERA. He has no doubt been outstanding but in my opinion, and I can’t stress that enough that it’s my opinion, I expect him to come back to Earth over the course of this season. This is not to take anything away from what he has been doing so far this season and certainly not to discount Harvey as a future star. As I mentioned with Jeter earlier, I just hope that Mets fans can still be proud of having an amazing talent on their team like Harvey, even if he’s giving up more runs and hits the rest of the way this year Harvey will come back to earth.

Every Sunday night I stumble into a drunken fetal position with a glass of cheap Cab Sav to watch my Sunday television. I like to get there a couple minutes before the show kicks off. Others do this as well, trying to see the recap of what happened in last week’s episode or because they particularly enjoy the intro to the show (YouTube The Soprano’s intro…epic). I do this for a very different and very specific reason though that differs: the letter “N”.

Anyone who has been living under a rock for years, or is too cheap to pony up to have certain premium channels (think HBO, Showtime, Starz), will be ignorant to what I’m getting at. The letter “N” naturally refers to nudity in the upcoming episode.

Even in a world where we have access to trillions and trillions of hours of free pornographic content, that “N” before my Sunday show starts brings a sense of excitement. It’s like you almost have something to root for while watching the show.

“Hey I really hope the letter N turns out to be Fiona Gallagher topless!” Or “Man I hope this is the episode where Carmela reveals herself to the world!” The key part of those sentences is one must refer to the person as their characters name. Saying ‘Emmy Rossum’ or ‘Edie Falco’ just doesn’t sound as clear. Plus it keeps you in tuned to the show.

The letter “N” could also be a giant backfire too. This can happen when the “N” is someone like Mandy from Shameless, or if it’s just a naked dude in a particular episode. That’s always a complete and let down. But let’s stay positive here and mention a few characters on these respective networks to look for and the show they star in, in no particular order: Fiona (Shameless), Faith and Karen (Californication), Khaleesi (Game of Thrones), Sloan (Entourage), Carrie (Homeland), Nancy (Weeds), Deb (Dexter), Meadow (later seasons of Soprano’s), etc.

Far from an exhaustive list, but those are some lovely ladies that bring justice to the letter “N” or perpetually left us wanting more…Who are some of your favorites?

The Cardiac Kids are at it again. The Miami Heat looked a little rusty and the Bulls capitalized down in south beach to take game one of the conference semi-finals. It’s not uncommon for teams that swept in the first round to lose game 1 after being well-rested. LeBron James finished with 24 points and 8 rebounds after being announced as the NBA MVP for the third time in his career.

The Bulls grit and post-presence allowed them to win a slug-fest in Miami. Nate Robinson continued his successful and flamboyant post season run with several clutch baskets down the stretch that put the game on ice late in the fourth quarter. Game 2 is May 8th 7:00PM EST

New York Rangers 4 – Washington Capitals 3 (WSH Leads 2-1)

Days after Braden Holtby claimed that the Rangers made his shutout in game 2 look very easy, the boys in blue clawed back to take game three of the series. Don’t be surprised if this game is the turning point of the series as the Rangers will have game 4 at home before they return to Washington.

The game was back and forth for most of the second and third period. Anytime the Rangers scored the Capitals had an answer. The contest was put on ice (not literally) when Derek Stepan lit the lamp late in the 3rd period. The emotional toil settled back in at the end of the third period as Washington was on a power play and also pulled their goalie. The 6-4 matchup continued for the final 1:54 of regulation with Ranger fans finally taking a breath after a last minute march by the Capitals.

With football powerhouses Real Madrid and Barcelona getting knocked out in the semi-final stage of UEFA, we can’t help but wonder, is the Bundesliga legit? Going into the UEFA cup, it was generally understood that these two teams were the favorites. Our friends at the bleacherreport think the German league is actually OVERrated despite having both teams in the championship game. Check it out.

Mike Green scored in overtime to put the Capitals up 2-0 in the series. The Ranger’s offense has been anemic up to this point. They’ve scored one goal, which was off a skate deflection in game 1. Nash will assistance and the Rangers will have to get back to their blue-collared style of play to have a prayer in this series against Ovechkin and his Caps.

2. Bulls 99 Nets 93 – Bulls win in 7

After finding out that several key players had the flu and were sidelined for at least one game, Thibodeau rallies his boys to a series victory in the Barclay’s Center. Earlier in the week Thibodeau said ‘we perfer not to make excuses’ when asked of his team’s inconvenient bout with the flu. The cardiac kid Nate Robinson along with a rag-tag cast of others marched into Brooklyn and knocked out a more talented team in a winner-take-all contest. Carlesimo is ousted as the Nets are left scrambling to find out where things went wrong and will likely look to more veteran leadership in the future.

1. Senators 6 Canadiens 1

Ottawa leads series 2-1. It’s hard to figure out whether this was a hockey game or a series of boxing matches. The battle in Canada has lived up to all expectations so far as these teams vie for a chance in the second round of the NHL playoffs. The rookie Jean-Gabriel Pageau netted a hat trick and also lost a tooth in what will likely be the most exciting series in the first round of the NHL payoffs.